Our house project.

We recently purchased our first home. It is small, yet snug and certainly the perfect size for our growing family. The house had been a rental property for quite a few years, so the house needed some fixing up. We took on quite a few projects with the much needed help of family and friends.

The first priority was to paint. Hannah and I had been trying to decide what colors we liked, and finally decided that she would do Luci's bedroom and the bathroom while I would do the family room and kitchen. We both decided on the bedroom.

The kitchen required an amount of extra work as we decided to repaint the cabinets which needed some degreasing and sanding before they could be painted. Without too many problems, the painting crew (Bruce, Cecilia, Owen, Levi, Pethai, Jida, Bryan, Jeff, Frank, Becky, Pam, Hannah and I) finished up the painting.

Once the painting was finished, we tackled the floors. Lowe's installed carpeting in the two bedrooms, while Bruce instructed the floor crew (Hannah, Levi, Erik Fall and myself) on the intricacies of hardwood bamboo flooring. My knees still hurt at the thought of doing this again, but the end result is definitely worth it.

Here, the floor is drying while we add heavy boxes to places on the floor where the wood bowed slightly. The blue tape helped hold the slats in place while the glue dried, preventing too much gapping.

Once finished with the flooring, the kitchen team took over (Bruce, Hannah, Cecilia and I). The galley-style kitchen really felt small and cramped, so we tried to open it up with some white paint. We painted the dark wood cabinets and removed the jaundice-yellow counter tops. We installed new counter tops we rescued from a previous kitchen with new formica. We also installed an electric cook top range, a seperate oven, a cast iron sink, new faucet, new dishwasher and new range hood/microwave. With the new look of the appliances and white paint on the previously dark wood, the kitchen appears to be much more open.

There are still many little projects left to take on, and with spring will come the outdoor projects. Both the front and back yards need to be landscaped and we are using the winter indoor months to plan for that, as well as finish up things inside.

Finished pictures of the after product are coming soon.